A diversion today before I finish my Argentina posts, since we did something really cool (cool! get it? ha!) yesterday.
We headed to Dinosaur Provincial Park to finish collecting a tyrannosaur that had been discovered in 2010 and largely excavated this summer. The specimen has a complete pelvis, but it was just too large a jacket to take out with people power alone. We enlisted the help of a helicopter to bring the jacket up to prairie level, and although we were a bit concerned about fog when we arrived it cleared up in plenty of time and the lift went off without a hitch.
The helicopter was able to set the jacket right into the flatbed truck and the pelvis is now at the university waiting to get prepped.
December in Alberta can be pretty chilly but it was a beautiful snowy day with hoarfrost coating all of the trees and grasses. The snow wasn't very deep but it did make it a bit challenging to descend into the badlands, as there were some steep and slippery spots and we had to watch out for semi-covered sinkholes. In the end it was a lovely crisp day to be outside, and very fine indeed to come home to a hot chocolate (with maybe a dash of Baileys for good measure).
Interesting how the jacket was lifted out. Quite the photo of it.
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